VICTIMS TELL TERROR OF MICHIGAN AVENUE KNIFE ATTACK

Richard Fulton, a Toledo safety council executive, was in Chicago on Wednesday for a seminar hosted by the National Safety Council.

But safety was nowhere to be found on the Magnificent Mile at 4 a.m., Fulton found.

''I must have run across Michigan Avenue twice with that guy chasing me with the knife. I didn`t have to dodge a single car,'' he said.

Fulton, 44, escaped the bizarre knife attack near the Chicago Marriott Hotel with only a superficial knife wound ''above the wallet.'' But his friend and fellow safety executive, Arthur D. Moriarity, 39, of Plymouth, Mass., was stabbed in the upper abdomen in the attack. He was in fair condition Wednesday evening in Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Also injured was John Collins, 31, of Hoffman Estates, who tried unsuccessfully to shelter Moriarity in the cab of the delivery truck he drives for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Collins, who only a month ago was attacked on the job by another knife-wielding assailant and escaped with a 14-inch gash in his unbuttoned leather jacket, was not so lucky this time.

''I didn`t see the knife. If I had I would have jumped in the truck and slammed the door,'' Collins said Wednesday as he recovered from a knife wound in the chest at Northwestern Memorial.

East Chicago Avenue Police District violent crimes detectives still were trying to unravel the incident Wednesday evening in interviews with three men, one of them a suspect, the two others witnesses. Police also were searching for a fourth man, believed to be one of the assailants.

Moriarity, executive director of the Massachusetts Safety Council in Boston, and Fulton, executive director of the Toledo-Lucas County Safety Council, had gone to a Near North Side nightspot and then had breakfast before heading back to their Michigan Avenue hotel Wednesday, Fulton said.

He said the two were walking at the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Ohio Street when they heard tires screeching and saw a car weaving as it came toward them on Ohio.

''We had to run across Ohio to keep from getting hit,'' Fulton said.

''When we got to the opposite curb, we stopped and he drove right at us. He drove right up on the curb with two wheels.''

Fulton said he and Moriarity had been drinking, but he did not remember if either said anything or made any gestures that might have triggered the ire of the two men he saw in the car. ''I don`t recall any exchange of words. I`m getting too old for that sort of thing,'' he said.

But police said one of the men being questioned claimed that he was called insulting names by either Fulton or Moriarity.

After stopping the car, the driver reached below the seat and pulled up two objects that looked like knives, Fulton said.

''I yelled, `They got weapons, Art.` Then I kicked the passenger side door to keep the other guy from getting out, but it was too late,'' he said.

''They started coming after us as we ran up Michigan Avenue.''

Fulton said the driver chased him, striking a glancing blow on his head once and then stabbing him in the buttock.

''I felt him hit me but didn`t know I had been stabbed,'' Fulton said.

''He said there were guys after him, so I told him to get in the truck,'' Collins said. The truck driver said the attacker ran up and told him to move, but he refused.

''He hit me, I saw blood,'' Collins said. ''Then he said `I`ll cut you again` and I said `Okay, I`ll move.` ''

Collins said the man who had been chasing Fulton then ran up and joined in attacking Moriarity in the truck cab. Collins reached inside the door, grabbed the microphone of his two-way radio and called for help, he said.

Collins radioed again when the attackers fled and one jumped into a taxicab. Two of the 10 delivery trucks that responded to the radio call for help cut the cab off before it could make a U-turn on Michigan Avenue. Another attacker escaped in the car the two had been in, Collins said.

The incident stirred frightful memories for Fulton.

''My brother was stabbed 10 years ago through the open car window by a guy who bumped him on the highway and followed him home,'' he said. ''When I saw the weapon, that crossed my mind. I thought it was best to get the hell out of there.''

But his younger brother had died on the rural roads of Ohio, not on Chicago`s Magnificent Mile, he said.

''When I was lying in the emergency room I was thinking of my brother and how quickly something like this can happen,'' he said. ''We weren`t doing anything unsafe and that area is normally pretty safe. I`m just glad those guys in the delivery trucks showed up.''